


What To Get For The Astrophysicist Who Has Everything

by Starfire (kalypsobean)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:05:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2811365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/Starfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Thor really screwed things up when he broke the Bifrost, so now he's babysitting another misplaced warrior pretty much because Jane hasn't worked out how to send him back.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	What To Get For The Astrophysicist Who Has Everything

**Author's Note:**

> For adanwen as part of [Lord of the Rings Secret Santa](http://lotr-sesa.livejournal.com) 2014.

The thing about Einstein-Rosen bridges is that apparently they are quite rare, and somewhat fragile. Jane slapped him across the face, again, when he confessed to destroying the Bifrost, and ignored him for a week in favour of redoubling her research as if she could fix it overnight.

"Um, guys? Thor?" Darcy said, after they had chased a particularly nasty but metaphysically harmless storm halfway through somewhere called the Greenwood. "Friend of yours?"

And that is how Thor became friend and protector to Boromir of Gondor.

 

Boromir had been wet and quite unwashed when he arrived, and as the only one strong enough to fend off his disoriented attacks, Thor had been left to make him acquainted with Midgard and its ways. It gave him something to do in between not taking sides in this registration dispute, and, once he grew to understand Boromir's language, it gave him a friend. Boromir was as much his equal in stature and experience as in battle, and he grew to see their companionship as a balm to his soul in those times he missed Asgard and his shieldmates, and Boromir as a true and loyal ally.

 

It is also reassuring, he finds, to have someone else to whom Midgardian customs are foreign and in cases, unfathomable. 

"But how does she understand the cats at all?" Thor asks, after sitting through an animated storybook on what Jane calls a 'DVD'. "Cats do not speak human languages."

"It is said that Queen Berúthiel sent her cats to spy for her," says Boromir.

"Seriously?" Jane says. "Get out, both of you. Go."

Thor, despite his strength, finds himself outside the flat, Boromir at their side. Boromir still wears his jerkin, and it attracts far too much attention for his liking.

"Perhaps she is half-Elven; the Elves have magic enough to speak to animals, even bend them to their will."

"Enough," Thor says, his skin cold at the mention of Elves and the reminder of what he had lost at their hands. "Perhaps the lady Darcy will explain it when we return."

"And where do we go?" Boromir says, looking about him as if there is a destination immediately at hand. Thor supposes he must have looked like that, once, when Midgard was still a mystery to him. 

"We shall go Christmas shopping!" he says. He feels around his trousers until he's sure that the case and plastic card are there; he could get them from inside, if they weren't, but he would rather not risk Jane's ire by re-entering so soon. 

"Yule," he says, when Boromir's confusion does not seem to clear. "The humans give gifts and celebrate the birth of one of their gods."

"Midwinter," Boromir says. "My people have been at war so long that I have not celebrated it since I was small."

War is something Thor understands, in its all-consuming scope. "Then we shall buy gifts for your loved ones, to give on your return."

Boromir turns away, and a car horn blares as he almost walks into its path. Thor steadies him as he jumps back. 

"Your family and friends will be glad to see you, no matter the manner of your parting," he says, and Boromir slumps. Thor wants to say more, but he knows it would be unwelcome; in subtlety, he is still but learning, but this he knows too well for it is the same look he sees in the mirror when he feels he will never please the Allfather.

 

The Underground is something neither of them are used to. Thor stands after a short while, because the seats are too small and too low to the ground to be comfortable in such a tight space, and Boromir looks around frantically, his skin pale and his lips pressed together so tightly Thor believes he must be biting them. Boromir jumps when the voice of the train announces that they are at Oxford Circus. Thor taps Boromir's arm and tilts his head; Boromir knows to follow him from the train and up the steps. They both relax when they are above ground and have room to move and breathe; Boromir coughs a bit, though Thor has grown unfortunately accustomed to the ever present smoke in the air.

"Watch it, weirdo," a man matters as he pushes between them, and Thor puts himself between the man and Boromir instinctively. Boromir doesn't seem to react, not to that at least. The buildings here are taller than the trees in the forest where they met, and Boromir is looking up at the sky.

"I have never seen such... men did this?" he says, and not for the first time Thor wonders what Boromir's home world must be like, for the man to constantly wonder at each new thing. It is certainly different to Asgard, for even there he knew of Midgard and some of its peculiar customs and cultures, and watched them grow; to Boromir, each thing is as if he is a child seeing it for the first time.

"Aye, most of it," Thor says. "Come. I must find a gift for the lady Jane."

Thor very quickly realises that Boromir is not following, this time.

"These are no markets," Boromir says. He reaches for a sword that isn't there, patting his hip and fidgeting when he finds it not there. (Jane had hidden it away as soon as she realised that it wouldn't come if Boromir called it. Mjolnir, it seems, is an anomaly on Midgard.) Thor sighs; though he really doesn't think he'll find anything suitable in such a place, he still doesn't know London well enough to find anything smaller, and he knows Jane well enough not to return to the flat for at least another two hours.

 

Thor rather dislikes doing this, he decides, yet again, from the back seat of one of Stark's infinite fleet of limousines. It is convenient enough, since the limousines are actually the only Midgardian vehicle Thor has found to have sufficient space for him to sit comfortably, and with Boromir, the taxi Tony had grumbled about being would have been awkward without the bonus attention angle. He has grown to accept Tony Stark's hospitality as a convenience to be used rarely enough to still be appreciated, yet often enough to not seem ungrateful; it is a political balance he had convinced Boromir of adeptly.

He has already forgotten several times that Boromir is also the son of a ruler.

"There's always online," Tony says, quite cheerfully. "People actually bring things right to your door. Avoids the whole, you know, panic attack thing."

Today the limousine had come with Tony Stark, already installed and irritatingly talkative. Thor pretends to not know that Tony had not heard about Boromir and come all the way to London hoping to see him, and Tony politely states he just happened to be in town and between meetings when Thor called, but Boromir has the look of trapped prey.

 

It is only when Tony abandons them in the weapons lab, apparently to fend off some call, that there is finally a moment without someone talking that Boromir seems to relax. He stops wearing at the edge of his jerkin, at least, and Thor feels some of the readiness leech from his muscles.

"It is all so different," Boromir says. 

"There is no need for apologies," Thor says, knowing that Boromir has been taught not to say sorry in case it shows weakness, as he was. "I am still learning as well. Midgard has much that we do not."

"Indeed," Boromir says. "There is much here that we could have used."

Tony had told them not to touch anything, but Boromir slides his fingers lightly over a sword-shaped frame. The frame begins to glow and hum under Boromir's touch, and alarms sound. Thor tenses, sliding immediately into a defensive stance, but only Tony comes running through the door.

"JARVIS, it's fine," Tony says, and the alarm shuts off abruptly. He tilts his head, then shakes it.

Thor has seen this before: the first time Tony had seen Mjolnir. 

"Interesting," Tony says. 

 

Thor had not found anything in the computer for Jane, although JARVIS had assembled a list of suggestions and taught him how to use a browser. Everything seems too small, or impersonal and a handheld planetarium seemed so small when on Asgard he could have a model created in the very air. However, he suspects he owes her something much larger than a trinket.

"Tony Stark gave you a lightsaber?" Jane says. "Why can't he give me a lightsaber? Or new equipment? I'd take a modular phase shifter. Maybe a particle accelerator." Thor does not think any of those things would be brought to him by an Amazon. 

"It is not a lightsaber." Boromir says it in the same matter of fact voice that Tony always uses to explain how his weapons are not actually weapons. Thor suspects introducing them, as accidental as it was, was not a good idea. Or it was a good idea; he's not sure, because Boromir seems a lot more at ease. "It is a tool that absorbs kinetic energy and amplifies it to effect a larger impact."

"Do you know what you're saying? I don't know what you're saying," Darcy says.

"Stark was hoping the technology could be adapted to make assistive devices for people with injuries," Thor says, but Jane interrupts.

"It's going away. I'm not having it in the flat."

Thor steps back as the sword lights up and twitches, Boromir's face twisting as it wrenches his shoulder.

"Out!" Jane says, and Thor finds himself in the small area that serves for a yard, the glass door slammed behind Boromir, who managed to keep the not-a-lightsaber.

"Perhaps I should stay somewhere else," Boromir says. The sword is still; Thor suspects it channels something other than kinetic energy. "I was quite able to survive in the forest."

"That would not be a good reflection on my hospitality," Thor says. "She will change her mind, undoubtedly before it is time to eat."

"You know her well," Boromir says. "You are lucky."

Thor says nothing; it was more than luck, he feels, but some things he cannot put into words a stranger would understand. 

"It is no wonder you do not find her a gift so easily," Boromir says. Thor looks over at him, still swiping the not-a-lightsaber in front of him as if it might do something different than glow dully. "You care too much about pleasing her that you lose sight of the gift itself."

"So I should buy her a particle accelerator?" Thor says.

"I don't know what that is," Boromir says.

"I do not think I do either." It does remind him of something Darcy showed him on the television, but he can't organise his thoughts to explain it more than that. "I think it is rather large, though." 

"If Tony Stark creates it, then she would perhaps deny it on principle alone."

"I believe so," says Thor. "I had thought of jewellery, but she does not wear such normally, and I would not want her to change that to please me." 

The not-a-lightsaber stops glowing, and Boromir shakes it, even waves it above his head and thrusts it into an invisible opponent.

"Perhaps it needs batteries?" Thor suggests. As if they had been waiting for it to fail, though, Darcy bangs on the door and yells through it, her voice muffled by the glass.

"In Gondor, we had nothing of this; I am not sure I can be of much use to you." Boromir slides the door open and, tentatively, as if Jane was watching him, he leans the not-a-lightsaber against the wall below Mjolnir before sitting at the table.

"These are chopsticks," Darcy says helpfully, as Jane places a plate in front of him.

Thor gets forks from the kitchen; his first and last experience with chopsticks had him picking slivers of wood from between unnamed vegetables. Boromir has managed to spear a slice of meat with his, but Thor slides one along the table anyway, grateful that nobody else is here to make it more crowded than it is.

 

Thor is used to sleeping on the floor, and somehow he continues to acquire various blankets and pillows; he has enough that he has shared them with Boromir with minimal loss of comfort, though Jane has instructed him to keep the thermostat turned to nineteen degrees because it runs warmer than it says. Apparently, it is freezing, though Thor does not observe much in the way of ice. Boromir, too, seems perfectly comfortable, though he has what is called a lounge chair to sleep on, since the floor is apparently not big enough to share despite Darcy's rather effusive protestations.

"What do you do, back home?" Boromir says, because sleep eludes them both.

"We have the hunt," Thor says, remembering riding through forests of green twisted trees, near the head of the hunt. "And feasts."

"We have feasts also," Boromir says. "All the families from the first two levels would come to Merethrond and dine for hours, course after course. When I was young I would run between the tables, chasing my brother and the other children, and we'd be so tired we'd be asleep before dessert."

"That is a good memory." For a moment Thor remembers the last feast he had attended in Asgard, though it had little semblance to the Yule traditions. "We had plays, put on by our children. They would prance about in their best furs until their parents made them change for the meal."

The light from Jane's room flickers out, then, and Boromir looks up; his profile is lit from the window, and Thor thinks, for a moment, not for the first time, that Boromir and he are not so different.

"Is there something from your world you could give her?" Boromir says, much more quietly, as if to match the receding sounds from outside. "It need not be much; maids from my city would be pleased with a small token, though our markets were not like the ones here."

"I came here with nothing, not even my father's blessing," Thor says. "I could not ask for anything even if it could be sent, and I have not the skill or material to make such art as our smiths create." Boromir doesn't answer, and when Thor looks over, he sees that Boromir has slumped and fallen asleep. Thor shuffles and lies on his side, towards the door out of habit more than necessity, and tries for the same. It doesn't last; it hasn't since he arrived, but this time it isn't because of his racing thoughts, but a rumble that sounds like an earthquake, and he knows that because the floor moves under him and the phone makes an irritatingly happy sound he still cannot turn down.

_Steve: Mild incident, bring the other guy, we could use extra hands._

Thor rolls his shoulders and reaches to call Mjolnir, and the phone makes that sound again.

_Tony: Car outside NO FLYING._

"Ugh, turn it off," Jane yells from her room.

To Thor's surprise, that is what seems to jolt Boromir from sleep. He stretches and tumbles from the chair, then stumbles to his feet. Thor pretends not to have noticed, though the banging on the door serves as a distraction; Jane makes a significant amount of noise as she runs to the door, a blanket around her shoulders.

"What?" she says, when she opens the door. "Oh. It's for you. I won't wait up," she says, and goes back to her room much more quietly.

"You coming?" Tony says, and Thor looks back at Boromir.

"Will you join us?"

"Bring the sword, I want to upgrade the repulsors before you use it in battle."

Thor resigns himself to perhaps missing Christmas altogether as Tony pulls Boromir out of the house by one arm. After all, the Amazons do say they can deliver in a day.


End file.
